Benjamin F. Hobbs

BENJAMIN F. HOBBS, the inaugural Theodore M. and Kay W. Schad Professor of Environmental Management, earned his PhD in environmental systems engineering in 1983 from Cornell University. He is professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University, a position he has held since 1995, and has served as chairman of that department. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Applied Statistics & Mathematics. Previously, he was economics associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory, National Center for Analysis of Energy Systems (1977-1979). He later joined the Energy Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a Wigner Fellow from 1982-1984. Between 1984 and 1995, he was on the faculty of the departments of Systems Engineering and Civil Engineering at Case Western Reserve University and, while there, was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Hobbs serves on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems; Energy, The International Journal; The Electricity Journal; and the Journal of Infrastructure Systems (ASCE).

A much sought after expert on environmental and energy systems analysis and economics with two decades of experience in the area of energy supply, Dr. Hobbs was asked in 2008 to chair Hopkins’ President’s Task Force on Climate Change, a group that will help guide the development of the university’s new climate change policy that focuses on practical, innovative and economically viable approaches to confront this environmental threat.